Ambient Occlusion

As mentioned, the 290.36 beta drivers now allow for the use of Ambient Occlusion directly through the control panel in the two most popular titles of the moment: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

If you're unfamiliar with Ambient Occlusion, it is most easily described as a way to make in-game shadowing more realistic, and therefore better. To enable the effect, open your NVIDIA Control Panel either via the desktop or the tray icon, and follow the steps below:

Browse to 'Manage 3D Settings,' select 'Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim' or 'Modern Warfare 3' in the drop-down. If you can't see it in the list, untick the 'Show only programs found on this computer' box and try again.

Set the 'Ambient Occlusion' option to Performance or Quality.

Click the Apply button.

With Ambient Occlusion enabled these are the results you should expect to see in Skyrim:

And here's an example of Ambient Occlusion in action in Modern Warfare 3:

Click to view an interactive comparison.

There will be a performance impact, have no doubt, though it is impossible to predict exactly how large given the millions of PC configurations, so we suggest enabling Fraps' frame rate overlay while you play, and should the frame rate drop below thirty simply undo the Ambient Occlusion changes or use the less demanding Performance mode.

Release Notes In Full

NVIDIA Ambient Occlusion

Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Adds NVIDIA Control Panel ambient occlusion support for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.